On camera video lights are extremely useful when you’re shooting with a DSLR or other video camera in a dark environment. We’ve rounded up the best on camera lights for video below. Candidates for best on camera lights for video: Neewer Dimmable LED on Camera Light for Video This onRead More →

Professional video lighting kits are often large, heavy and bulky which can be extremely inconvenient especially when you’re traveling to a video shoot or have limited space to pack all your video gear in. Thankfully there are now a slew of small and compact video lights available which take upRead More →

Videos with white backgrounds are a popular aesthetic choice that’s clean and simple. It used to take a movie studio to film a scene with a white background like in the Hollywood movie “The Matrix” or as seen in Apple commercials. But shooting a video with a white background isRead More →

LED video lights can be tremendously useful for videographers and indie filmmakers for two main reasons: they’re small and often light so they can fit into tight spaces and small lighting kit bags, and they’re also often dimmable, which saves you from fussing with sheets of diffusion or external dimmersRead More →

Let’s say you’re making a documentary film. You have your subject and… nothing else. While there are plenty of generic film equipment lists for fiction films, documentary films often need specialized equipment. So here’s our complete documentary film equipment list. Some documentaries may need only a fraction of these itemsRead More →

Pictured above: A Scrim Jim (listed below) for diffusing light, either outdoors or indoors. When you’re first putting together your lighting kit, you’ll obviously get the basics: light and stands. But the difference between a professional kit and a beginner’s kit lies not only in the quality of the lightsRead More →

You’ve got the documentary film camera, you’ve got the microphones for documentary film. You’ve got a case, a tripod, but what are you missing? Here’s fifteen kit essentials for documentary filmmaking that you may not have considered yet… 1. Extra Camera Batteries (Check reviews & prices) Running out of juiceRead More →

There are many odds and ends that can help make your documentary filmmaking go smoother. These range from clips, ties, specially-made cases, and other accessories. LaCie Rugged Hard Drive (Check reviews & prices) Documentary filmmakers often find themselves in remote places with unpredictable weather and lots of great footage. SoRead More →

Choosing a lighting kit for conducting documentary interviews is an important task, and if you’re going to be shooting sit down interviews, your production values depend on it. Size, weight and wattage are both factors for many filmmakers to consider when picking out lighting gear, because unless you’ve got aRead More →

About this website

We're here to help you find the best documentary camera for your documentary film. We've looked at all the available documentary video cameras on the market today from DSLRs to traditional video cameras and made our recommendations.

Many of our filmmaking gear reviews and how-to articles on video cameras and microphones are also suited toward making fictional indie films as well, so this is not purely a documentary filmmaking website.

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